Ashes to Ashes

My homework was to do an analysis - any trusted literary theory was acceptable - of a poem or short story about either being an underdog or making a comeback. I didn’t think these two themes were all that related. Think about it. Underdog refers to a sports match or athletic event of some sort, where one side is thought to be a long shot for winning the competition. A comeback can refer to a performer - actor, musician - who is successful in returning to the limelight after a period of absence. The underdog is constantly competing with a superior opponent, while the comeback happens (if it does) when the persons involved in trying to get back to what they once were are mostly competing with their former selves. A comeback also brings with it a sense of living on borrowed time, as if a comeback bore the weight of years.

This, broad-based and inaccurate as it might be, was my frame of mind when I chose to analyze a poem, because it had fewer words and thus should be easier, right? Plus, how was I to know my internet search would lead me straight to one of the best-known writers with a sense both of being the underdog and of trying to make a comeback? I think it’s Sylvia Plath’s welding of the two concepts that in the end wrenches responses from readers. At the time, though, all I could think was how the poem engulfed me and the only way I could do the assigned critique was to let that happen. Plath’s words were like prongs gripping me and holding me in place. I just hope I won’t get in trouble for citing the poem in its entirety. 

You see, I was not in a position to win the battle. But was my position on the inside or outside of the gulf of this poem?

Lady Lazarus, by Silvia Plath 

I have done it again.   

One year in every ten   

I manage it——

The opening intimates that whatever ‘this’ is, it’s been done more than once, but that ‘again’ suggests it’s something wrong, like some sort of mistake or flaw that returns to make life unpleasant. ‘Every ten years’ sounds like a death knell, something fated to happen, like a bad act or a gross miscalculation. I know I cannot escape, break the cycle. I am haunted by this knowledge. Why am I unable to do the right thing? Am I less worthy? Yes, I think I am.

A sort of walking miracle, my skin   

Bright as a Nazi lampshade,   

My right foot

A paperweight,

My face a featureless, fine   

Jew linen.

Just because I am not Jewish doesn’t mean I’m antisemitic. If I talk about Nazis and Jews, I am not antisemitic. They are just words, but sometimes words are blamed because of the ignorance of certain people. We don’t talk about certain things, especially at certain times in history, but we silently condemn (Nazis) or defend (Jews). My body and mind lie at odds with these two things, and still I name them, knowing why I do, fearing I will be shunned for using these two words in a single sentence. It is hard to speak, knowing the accusations will come. It is hard to sign my name, knowing it came from the land of Nazis and is not Jewish. I wonder if I should be ashamed of what I am not? Of a blame I never inherited?

Peel off the napkin   

O my enemy.   

Do I terrify?——

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?   

The sour breath

Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh

The grave cave ate will be   

At home on me

This is all too easy to understand, as if the words were crawling across my body, turning my skin into crepe napkins. Less than skin, not even tissue, I feel like a skull, like my entire body has climbed up into my head and died there, in a fetal position. I feel myself grinning from ear socket to ear socket, these teeth set in fossilized gums, dry as paper. I know this this to be true, because my speech is frozen, spiked, and dissected, like ate and will be are spiked, like all three lines here are pointed monosyllables that only sit together because they were printed together. Soon - soon - the - flesh - the - grave - cave - ate - will - be - at - home - on - me. I am being consumed by those syllables, which have devoured my flesh and left only this talking skull.

And I a smiling woman.   

I am only thirty.

And like the cat I have nine times to die.

Smiling is something we do for all the wrong reasons. This grimace of a smile of thirty but clad with a misinformed past. I feel guilty, still, for what I have not done. For not speaking out, even when there was nobody there to listen. Also, when I say thirty, I can mean sixty or ninety or more. And nine times to end it all, by accident or by plan. I tried once, stupidly, by taking ten aspirins. My live still remembers that day. I don’t think my parents knew of the grave cave I wanted, my limbs twisted, taught, in a pain worse than death. Shamed into it, ashamed because I was too weak to win that competition. By thirty, I had rotted inside, or maybe just melted. I knew I was worth less than six lives of a cat, and hoped to reach only the next one.

This is Number Three.   

What a trash

To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.   

The peanut-crunching crowd   

Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot——

The big strip tease.   

Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands   

My knees.

I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.   

I don’t like these verses a whole lot. There’s an air of self-pity about them, but also a sense that there is an audience for the antics involved in killing oneself, or trying to. The ‘peanut-crunching crowd’ is something that should not be allowed in a poem by a serious writer. It has the air of a circus to it. Meanwhile, we are all skin and bone - and hair, muscles, internal organs - as long as we are alive. Nothing unique in these lines, which might have been suppressed or killed with little effect on the overall poem, in my opinion.

The first time it happened I was ten.   

It was an accident.

The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.   

I rocked shut

As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

We all make mistakes, make some really big ones even at the age of ten, the first decade. But we might never recover from the mistake made at age ten. This often sets us up for the second misstep. I rock shut because the world needs to go away while I am trying to go away, disappear, stop. Now it is your turn to decide if they picked real worms off of me or if this is a metaphor for how deep the grave ate me. Moreover, it is not common for pearls to be sticky nor shaped like worms. This is more indicative of maggots, but because of this image pearls will never again be glimmering spheres resting on a neck. It is clear that the situation here is closer to death than anything else. The direction the poem is heading is an icy slope, rugged as a skinless skull, and harder.

Dying

Is an art, like everything else.   

I do it exceptionally well.

This is true. It’s possible to make an art out of dying. It is possible to repeat, from start to finish, the ending. Until nobody is paying attention any more. We cry death! Like some cry wolf! Until we can’t. It’s not something to brag about, though. To some people dying comes naturally and they don’t need to practice. They’re just naturally good at what they do, please note the pun.

I do it so it feels like hell.   

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.

It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.   

It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day

To the same place, the same face, the same brute   

Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’

That knocks me out.   

The theatrical comeback is an interesting case. We can’t be sure who is responsible for the coming back. Is it the revenant or those who lie in wait for the new performance, in a new skin? But coming back to the same place can be painful. Like the old saying goes, ‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come’. But I did know, and still came back, much worse for the wear - scuffed, stretched out, rubbed raw, ready to return to the pre-comeback time when it wasn’t necessary to stand before others and be judged.

There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge   

For the hearing of my heart——

It really goes.

I feel like I’m up for sale, like my whole body, and especially the parts less visible, has a lot of little price tags, like sticky white pearls. None of this is anybody’s business. Not really. 

And there is a charge, a very large charge   

For a word or a touch   

Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.   

This is the part where it all falls apart, where I all fall apart. It is just words now, naming my body. A word. A touch. Blood. A piece of what is outside of me. Why should anybody want my hair? If I’m dead, do they want my clothes? (Of course I’m sure I bought a lot of dead people’s clothes at thrift shops over the years.) If they want these things, they should pay, I think. Pay for their greed and their madness, which is not mine.

So, so, Herr Doktor.   

So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,

I am your valuable,   

The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.   

I turn and burn.

Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

I do not wish to dwell on the Nazis, or maybe it’s Freud who is Herr Doktor. Or a father figure who worships me like precious metal. Forged by him, I can only cry madly and leave it all in the air to hunker down in my own ashes. Don’t worry. I know what I am worth, very little.

Ash, ash—

You poke and stir.

Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——

A cake of soap,   

A wedding ring,   

A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer   

Beware

Beware.

Less than flesh or bone now, I bequeath you a bar of soap, what little gold fits in a ring or a tooth. As if Herr Doktor cares, because it’s not his concern. The fire has consumed me as if, due to my being of so little worth, I had allowed it to do so. Poke, prod, invade me, but not without caution. After all, my fragmented self, my broken web, still knows what you are doing to me. Knows and will not tolerate.

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair   

And I eat men like air.

I knew I was a phoenix from the day I was born and so cannot fear the fire. Not only that, this moving from life to death and back again has given me an appetite. My scalp is in flames, my heart races, and I am famished. I have set my table with my best china and silverware, waiting to see if I’ll be eating alone, and if it’s my final supper, tasting like wind.